Happy New 2018!

It’s been awhile since the last post… In the meantime I completed a mural painting in the high school where I teach Art history (that was several months ago, actually). It took a month of work – on and of, a couple of hours a day. First pencils, than the lines and finally – colours. It was done in acrylic paints. One of the main challenges was drawing out all those lines with small brush and WITHOUT ruler. I used it in the pencil stage (mistakes done with pencils, of course, could be easily erased) but I couldn’t use it in later stages, since the ruler too easily slide down on vertical surface. The resulting smudges would be very hard to fix. Another problem was the fact that the original reference image was small (800 pixels). I printed it out on A3 format, but still, I could not discern most of the details – so I had to extrapolate from what I knew on cityscape drawings of the period. The mural is based on the earliest known depiction of Zadar (my city), from 1486.

Nasta Rojc (1883-1964), one of the first academically educated female painters in Croatia, was born in 1883 into a wealthy family. Her father was Croatian politician Milan Rojc, a former Minister of Education. From a young age she didn’t fit the stereotype of a young girl so, after many quarrels with her family, she persuaded them to let her peruse her true calling – painting. She was mentored by the prominent Croatian painter Oton Iveković thanks to whom she became skillful enough to continue educating herself in Vienna (“Kunstschule für Frauen und Mädchen”) and Munich, alongside some of the most exquisite Croatian artists like Miroslav Kraljević and Josip Račić. She was founder, along with Lina Crnčić-Vivant of the Club of female visual artists in Zagreb, 1920. Nasta excelled at portraits and landscapes, but although she was often present in various galleries, her work was frequently overlooked.

Croatia’s Šime Fantela and Igor Marenić today won the men’s 470 olympic gold in Rio. They went into the race with a 10-point lead and were never threatened, with their nearest rivals finishing behind them.

Šime Fantela (born in 1986 in Zadar) is a three-time Olympian in 470 class and has won four medals at the 470 World Championships. In 2009 in Rungsted, Fantela and fellow Croatian Igor Marenić, claimed gold medal at the 470 World Championships, becoming the first Croatians to win gold medal at the ISAF World Championships.

Cities in 4K is a worldwide project. The idea is to represent as many cities as possible in the newest 4K resolution. The footage is filmed in the popular timelapse photography technique combined with standard 4K scenes to best to represent the cities and the life in it. Zadar was recently voted Best European Destination 2016 so it is fitting that it is the next city featured to further show tourists in high quality what they can expect. Check out the breathtaking video of Zadar, filmed by Amir Kulaglić using the latest technology.

Twenty selected cities competed for the prestigious title of Best European Destination 2016. After a three weeks’ period of online voting, my city – Zadar is elected as the best and won this prestigious title.

Zadar is a city of exceptional history and rich cultural heritage. It is actually a city monument, surrounded by historical ramparts, a treasury of the archaeological and monumental riches of ancient and medieval times, Renaissance as well as many contemporary architectural achievements such as the first Sea Organ in the world.

Hvar is the sunniest Croatian island, clocking in the average 2726 hours of sun yearly, drawing in thousands of tourists, sailboats and yachts, but it also has a darker side which is just as stunning. The creative duo Mario Romulić and Dražen Stojčić spent 2 years filming the skies around the famed island and their final cut was released a couple of days ago.

During the two-year period, Romulić and Stojčić were lucky enough to capture some spectacular thunderstorms in slow motion and time lapse techniques. They shot over 350,000 thousand photographs, picking “only” 10,000 best frames for this film. The filming took place on the island Hvar itself, but also from mountain Biokovo and nearby island Brač.

The Correr Museum in Venice is mounting an exhibition of the art of Andrea Meldolla (Medulić), better known as Schiavone (a Venetian term at the time for the person coming from Croatia). He was born in my city – Zadar, Croatia circa 1510-15 and trained either here or in Venice. Schiavone had established himself by 1540 and introduced Mannerist modes and motifs into Venetian circles. His painting divided Venetian public opinion of the period for his evident nonconformity.

A fine draughtsman and prolific etcher, he was appreciated by Giorgio Vasari, who in 1540 commissioned a Battle between Charles V and Barbarossa from him, subsequently given to Ottaviano de’ Medici. In his book Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors & Architects, Vasari declared that in Schiavone, he saw the embodiment of a “certain manner that is used in Venice, that is dashed off, or rather, sketched, without being in any respect finished”. Now, Venice celebrates the artist in the first retrospective to be ever dedicated to him, examining Schiavone’s production thanks to many international loans and the latest critical studies, together with his relationship with other famous Venetian artists of the time.

Schiavone’s work was solitary, non-academic and in some ways rebellious; an evident feature is his role as precursor in the definition of a new synthetic style, with a sometimes almost “informal” touch, that influenced even Titian and Tintoretto.